Vincent Mariel Galang
Published:
Photo by Tara Winstead via Pexels
Telecommunication companies face broader police powers under the law.
Singapore has expanded police powers to disrupt scams before they occur, increasing compliance obligations for telecommunication companies, payment firms, and online platforms.
The Scams (Countermeasures) and Other Matters Act 2026, passed in September, lets the Singapore Police Force (SPF) intervene earlier through account disabling, disclosure, and service limitation orders.
“The bill is designed to strengthen upstream measures and address gaps in information sharing between the police and service providers to disrupt scams earlier,” Melanie Ho, head of professional and enterprise dispute practice at WongPartnership LLP, said in an emailed reply to questions.
The law also creates a framework for information sharing between the police and service providers, boosts measures against online scam content, and raises the maximum administrative penalty for noncompliance with codes of practice or implementation directives to $10m from $1m.
Ho said the legislation responds to increasingly sophisticated scam methods and aims to prevent scams before losses occur.
“Although scam cases and losses fell in 2025 and 2026, the scale of scams remains a significant concern in Singapore, which averaged around 90 reported scam cases and $2m in losses per day,” she said.
The SPF's Mid-Year Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2026 showed scam cases fell 14.4% and losses declined 17.9%, whilst cases involving losses of at least $100,000 dropped 24.5%.
Despite the decline, scams remain Singapore's most common crime type, with online platforms continuing to be the main channel used by scammers and elderly victims suffering higher average losses than other age groups.
Ho said telecommunication companies are likely to face the biggest operational change because their classification as “scam-enabling services” expands the types of police orders they may get.
She said some operators might need infrastructure upgrades to process and act on orders efficiently.
Telecommunication companies need to secure phone numbers and communication infrastructure against threats such as SIM swaps, Raja Hassan Fayyaz, vice-president of product development at Shufti Pro Limited, said.
Fayyaz said scam prevention requires linking fraud signals across devices, accounts, and transaction patterns to stop infrastructure from being reused.
Ho said smaller payment institutions might face greater compliance challenges than bigger competitors because they often have fewer technological resources and operational processes to respond to police requests.
Rather than buying more fraud-detection tools, firms should review how quickly they can receive, assess, and act on police orders, Fayyaz said.
Who receives an order, who makes the decision, how quickly they can restrict an account or service, and how quickly they can correct a mistake if one is made are the questions firms should address, he added.
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